


your ex-lover is (still not quite) dead

by copperiisulfate



Category: Loveless, Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Loveless Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 14:35:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11807949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperiisulfate/pseuds/copperiisulfate
Summary: the closer you are, the stronger you fight.a natsume yuujinchou/loveless fusion





	your ex-lover is (still not quite) dead

**Author's Note:**

> based on the blackhole of loveless au headcanons and not!fic lady_peony and i wept about over the years, except now in...full sentences?

_don’t leave_ , he wants to say.

 _i can’t do this without you. i don’t want to do this without you_  – but the words don’t come. 

(in retrospect, maybe, he will realize that this was the problem after all. the words never came, not the way they should have, and never the right ones.)

shuuichi looks out their bedroom window, something vacant and faraway in his eyes and it infuriates seiji to no end.

he throws himself into the next spell battle with everything he’s got and more; meanwhile, shuuichi gets careless, takes more damage than he was ever supposed to. any damage is too much, logistically, but this is wholly unacceptable.

it’s later, when seiji is inspecting shuuichi’s bruises, scanning his back and ribs with an irritable sort of briskness, that shuuichi says, “you don’t get to be mad about this.”

“like hell i don’t. we lost and you got hurt.”

“not everything is about winning,” shuuichi says, weary.

“when losing means you getting hurt, actually, it is.”

“not everything is about you either,” shuuichi says, a little stiffer.

“it’s like you’re not even listening to me,” seiji laughs once, sharp, “ _honestly._ ”

“one more,” shuuichi says.

he knows where this is going and he’s not going to ask no matter how much he knows shuuichi wants him to. it’s been a long time in coming, if he’s being honest. he’s seen it miles away but uncharacteristically especially for himself, pretended he could ignore it, live in blissful denial forever.

“one more and we’re done,” shuuichi adds, unprompted.

 _don’t do this_ , he thinks. not to me, not to us. 

“look,” shuuichi says, and the worst thing about all of this is that seiji can tell precisely how deep it cuts him to say any of this. “we’re supposed to be a team right? so i get a say as well.”

“what do you want me to say? no–what would you have me do?” ( _anything,_  he thinks. _anything, anything_. he would take a bullet for this boy – would riddle most everyone he knew with bullets for this boy – without a moment’s hesitation. the thought should frighten him and, maybe, once it had. it had thrilled him too, once. now, it just is what it is.)

“nothing,” says shuuichi, quiet and a little fractured. “i’m sorry. i know how much this meant to you–means to you–but someday, who knows, maybe there will be somebody el–”

“don’t you  _dare_ ,” seiji says, low and dangerous; still, it’s too weary to instill as much venom in it as he wants to. 

this, at least, makes shuuichi smile, though it is wistful and complicated in several ways. it’s difficult to know how to feel about the fact that this is the person he has become, and that somewhere along the way he has begun to take pride in being the thing matoba seiji found irreplaceable. it’s intoxicating is what it is and within the tantalizing beauty of it also lies the poison of it. “but it was an honour, you know? you’re the best there is.”

“because of you,” seiji sighs, wishes he would just  _stop_  with the past tense even as he knows that it’s better to do it sooner rather than later, better for him to acclimate.

shuuichi shifts then, moves to kiss him, an apology written all over it that seiji wants no part of but seiji will take all of him that he can for however long they have left of this and so, seiji lets him, a brush of the lips, once, then twice. 

shuuichi’s about to deepen it but seiji half-heartedly tears himself away. 

better to do it sooner rather than later, he figures. he needs to allow himself to acclimate.

*

*

*

“my, my, natori-san.” the voice is deeper, still ever-resonant. natori would recognize it anywhere from the way it knocked the wind out of him. “no phone call, no post cards. how many years has it been?”  
  
natori half bristles but hides it well. “you don’t waste time, do you?” he turns around in a fluid movement, then tries not to lose his footing or make his visual study of his ex-partner, well, ex-everything, too obvious. he’s taller, of course, imposing in a wholly different way than he’d been back then. his hair is longer and he fills out his coat, cocks his head, and makes his presence  _felt_. natori, in a fit of wishful thinking, wants nothing more in this moment than to  _unfeel_. “so i hear you’re teaching now,“ natori tries out the faux ease. it sounds convincing enough. “never quite pictured you to be the sort. do your students know what they’re signing up for?

“they have a vast amount of potential, actually. remind me a bit of our own golden years.”

it’s alarming, the ease with which he can talk about it, even now, especially now.

“nostalgia is often rose-tinted, seiji,” natori chuckles, slipping into the old names and old habits before he can quite catch himself. “in your case, gold-tinted perhaps.”  
  
“i don’t think my rear-view vision is all that blurry,” he grins, “no pun intended,” pointing to his covered, damaged eye. “we were the stuff of legends and you know it.” and then, it’s not vindictive, not exactly, but shuuichi can’t think of another way to take it when he adds, “pity you walked away.”

 _don’t take the bait,_  natori tries to tell himself.  _don’t do it. don’t do it,_  he can feel himself practically hiss. “thing is,” natori sighs, exasperated, “we were just kids caught up in a bloodsport.”

“if that’s the story you tell yourself,” seiji shrugs a shoulder. anyone else, and it could be nothing, but it isn’t anyone else and  _nothing_  can ever just be nothing.

_that was always the problem with you–still is, apparently. you always had to mythologize everything, and then fall in love with the impossible idea of it. reality, of course could never keep up._

_i wasn’t a legend. maybe you were. and if you were, then i couldnt keep up._

natori doesn’t say any of it out loud, not now, not yet. it’s only their first meeting in nearly a decade. he doesn’t know if he wants a second or third. doesn’t know if he wants an opportunity to ever say it out loud (– doesn’t know what he’ll do if he never gets to say it out loud).

the worst thing about all of this is that despite anything seiji says or shuuichi thinks, at the core of it is just:  _this_. it’s in the way seiji still looks at him, the sort of gaze that makes natori feel hollowed out and stripped down to his bones.

 _i hate that you knew me_ , he thinks, suddenly, bitterly.

 _know you still_ , says a quieter, deeper, echo in his head.

he knows full well that people can move past their first love, can eventually come to forget it altogether.

_you know it and i know it. at the very least, i swear that i know it._

_we were all wrong for each other_ , he thinks, even with seiji’s eyes on him, seemingly begging and begging to differ.

**Author's Note:**

> this may or may not ever get additional (non-chronological) parts but the (/?) modifier let's me pretend like it might. rating likely to go up in later parts if later parts ever happen.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Podfic: your ex-lover is (still not quite) dead](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12784515) by [lady_peony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_peony/pseuds/lady_peony)




End file.
